Chris Selley on Hamid Ghassemi-Shall: Ottawa goes through the motions

Hamid Ghassemi-Shall: Ottawa goes through the motions

If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was up late Wednesday night watching Question Period on the webcast, he might have enjoyed a maniacal chuckle — specifically when minister of state for foreign affairs Diane Ablonczy rose to demand justice for Canadian citizen Hamid Ghassemi-Shall, who was dubiously convicted of espionage in Iran in 2008. “This House … calls for his release and return to his family and spouse in Canada, and urges Iran to reverse its current course and to adhere to its international human rights obligations,” she said. MPs agreed unanimously.

None of those things is likely to occur. Though Mr. Ghassemi-Shall faces the death penalty, he hasn’t even been afforded consular visits. (Iran doesn’t think much of dual citizenship.) Justice was never done for Zahra Kazemi, the Canadian photojournalist murdered by her Iranian interrogators nearly a decade ago. Still, governments must go through these sorts of motions. The only thing less likely than Ottawa changing Tehran’s mind is Tehran changing its mind on its own.

But as its ministers would be pleased to tell you, this government won’t go through the motions for just anyone. Whereas pleas for clemency once were a routine part of Canada’s anti-death penalty stance, it took a Federal Court ruling to elicit even tepid written support for Ronald Allen Smith, the confessed double-murderer on Montana’s Death Row. “This letter should not be construed as reflecting a judgment on Mr. Smith’s conduct,” Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird stressed in his court submission — as if being anti-murder and anti-death penalty are somehow frictional positions.

This approach is entirely defensible, to a point. The higher the certitude of guilt, the less objectionable the death penalty becomes (though it still tops out at massively objectionable, in my view). “It seems to me that a distinction can be made between a death sentence for a murder conviction in a Western democracy and a death sentence for a vague charge of espionage or crimes against Islam in a country that flagrantly and systemically violates human rights,” Sheryl Saperia, Canadian policy director for the Foundation for Defense of Democrcacies, recently wrote in the Ottawa Citizen.

She was comparing Mr. Ghassemi-Shall’s case to that of Omar Khadr, but it’s the same argument people make for ignoring Mr. Smith. The problem is that the tin-pot theocracies and dictatorships in which Canadians might find themselves at risk of unjust execution are very unlikely to think of themselves as such and thus appreciate the distinction. Indeed, Iran might very well go out of its way to take the approach as an insult. At the height of tensions over Ms. Kazemi’s death, Iran tried to create an international incident out of an Iranian teenager being shot to death by a police officer — in self-defence, he claimed — in Port Moody, B.C.

“The Canadian government has the worst, most backward and racist judiciary system, and well we know the attitude of its law towards killers of an Iranian Muslim,” government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham thundered.

Backward, yes; racist, almost certainly at times; but the worst? Come on, Mr. Elham, now you’re being ridiculous! But of course, that nonsense is aimed at an Iranian audience. Logic is beside the point. Canada’s case-by-case advocacy for its citizens probably doesn’t make a difference anywhere. But in facilitating anti-Canadian talking points — Great Satan’s lapdog spits on Iran! — it can only possibly make things worse.

And for what? The only purpose of this approach seems to be to satisfy Canadians’ bloodlust in the absence of any political will to reintroduce capital punishment, and perhaps bolster this “principled foreign policy” we keep hearing about. Both may be smart politics: Polls show a majority of Canadians support the death penalty in certain situations, and the Conservative base loathes moral relativism. But the government didn’t even appeal the Federal Court ruling ordering it to support Mr. Smith’s clemency. It just mailed in a halfhearted plea. That’s not very principled. Weighed against a single Canadian life, this self-indulgent exhibitionism seems very ill-advised.

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.